Charles Fort Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 - May 3, 1932), writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena, was the son of an Albany grocer of Dutch ancestry. According to some sources he was born on August 9.
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2 Fort and the unexplained 3 Followers and fans of Fort 4 See also 5 Quotes 6 Books by Fort 7 Books about Fort 8 External links |
Charles Hoy Fort was born in 1874 in Albany, New York. An authoritarian father beat a sense of independence into the young Fort, a budding naturalist who would collect sea shells, minerals and birds. Curious and intelligent, the young Fort did not excel at school, though he was quite a wit and full of knowledge about the world - yet this was only a world he had read of. So, at age 18, Fort left New York on a worldwide tour to 'put some capital in the bank of experience.' He travelled through the western United States, Scotland and England, until finally falling ill in South Africa.
Returning home he was nursed by and later married Anna Filing, a girl he had known from his childhood.
Success as a short-story writer was intermittent between periods of terrible poverty and depression. Fort wrote ten novels, though only one, The Outcast Manufacturers (1906), was published- critics said it was ahead of its time but it was popularly unsuccessful. In 1915, Fort began to write two books, entitled X andY, the first dealing with the idea that beings on Mars were controlling events on earth, and the second with the postulation of a sinister civilization extant at the South Pole. These books caught the attention of writer Theodore Dreiser, who attempted to get them published, but to no avail. Disheartened by this failure, Fort burnt the manuscripts, but was soon renewed to begin work on the book that would change the course of his life, The Book of the Damned.
His experience as a journalist coupled with a contrarian nature prepared him for his real-life work, mocking at the pretensions of scientific positivism and the tendency of journalists and editors of newspapers and scientific journals to rationalize away the scientifically incorrect.
Fort's relationship with the study of anomalous phenomena is frequently misunderstood and misrepresented. For over thirty years Charles Fort sat in the libraries of New York and London, assiduously reading scientific journals, newspapers and magazines, collecting notes upon phenomena that lay outside the accepted theories and beliefs of the time. Examples of these phenomena include many of what are variously referred to as occult supernatural, paranormal and anomalous phenomena- for instance, teleportation, poltergeist events, falls of frog, fishes, inorganic materials of an amazing range, crop circles, unaccountable noises and explosions, spontaneous fires, levitation, mysterious appearances and disappearances, giant wheels of light in the oceans and animals found in places they should not be. Many of these phenomena are now collectively and conveniently referred to as 'Fortean' phenomena (or 'Forteana'), whilst others have developed into their own schools of thought, for example, UFOs into ufology.
Fort in his lifetime must have taken tens of thousands of notes-- he is said to have compiled as many as 40,000 notes, though there were no doubt many more than this. The notes were kept on cards in shoeboxes. They were taken on small squares of paper, in a cramped shorthand of Fort's own invention, and some of them survive today in the collections of the University of Pennsylvania. More than once, depressed and discouraged, Fort destroyed his work, but always began again. Some of the notes were published, little by little, by the Fortean Society until its dissolution.
From these researches Fort wrote seven books, though only four survive. These are: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932); one book was written between New Lands and Lo! but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo!. Understanding Fort's books takes time and effort: his style is complex, violent and poetic, satirical and subtle, profound and puzzling. Ideas are cast offhand into the scrum of thought and then recalled a few pages on; examples and data are offered, compared and contrasted, conclusions made and broken, as Fort holds up the unorthodox to the scrutiny of the orthodoxy that continually fails to account for them: pressing on his attacks, Fort shows the ridiculousness of the conventional explanations and then interjects with his own theories - that there is a Super-Sargasso Sea into which all lost things go - and justifies his theories by noting that they fit the data as well as the conventional explanations. As to whether Fort believes this theories, he gives us the answer- 'I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.' (in other words, facts are 'underdetermined': for any given collection of facts, more than one theory will explain them adequately...this is widely accepted now, but was extremely controversial at the time Fort was writing). Sceptics and critics frequently misunderstand Fort in the face of these examples and consider him as credulous and naive- he was not. Over and over again, Fort rams home a few basic points that are frequently forgotten in discussions of 'what is science': the boundaries between science and psuedo-science are 'fuzzy' (see fuzzy logic) not binary, these boundaries change over time, and there is a strong sociological influence on what is considered 'acceptable' or 'damned' (see strong program in the sociology of scientific knowledge). He also points out that whereas facts are objective, how facts are interpreted depends on who is doing the interpreting and in what context. These are viewpoints that would not be widely accepted until the early 21st century.
There are many phenomena in Fort's works which have now been partially or entirely "recuperated" by mainstream science, but many of Fort's ideas are on the very borderlines of science, or beyond, in the fields of paranormalism and the bizarre. Fort resolutely refused to abandon the territory between science and the absurd. Among Fort's contributions to the thought of the Twentieth Century was the invention of the word "teleportation" to denote the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which tongue-in-cheek, he suggested may be connected. He also is perhaps the first person to explain strange human teleportations by the hypothesis of alien abduction.
Many consider it odd that Fort, a man so skeptical and so willing to question the pronouncements of the scientific mainstream, would be so eager to take old stories--for example, stories about rains of fish falling from the sky--at face value. Yet this is not the case: Fort remarked 'I offer the data. Suit yourself.' The theories and conclusions Fort presented allegedly came from the same sources as those of what Fort called 'the orthodox conventionality of Science': it did not matter to Fort whether his data and theories were accurate: his point was that alternative conclusions and world-views can be made from the data than those which Fort called 'orthodox,' and that the conventional explanations of Science are only one of a range of explanations, none more justified than another. In this respect, he was ahead of his time. In The Book of the Damned he showed the influence of societal values and what would now be called a 'paradigm' on what scientists consider to be 'true': this prefigured work by Thomas Kuhn years later. In a similar way the anarchic 'anything goes' approach to science of Paul Feyerabend is similar to Fort's.
Fort's great contribution is to the humour of science, for although many of the phenomena which science rejected in his day have since been proven to be objective phenomena, and although Fort was prescient in his collection and preservation of these data despite the scorn they received from his contemporaries, Fort was more of a parodist and a humorist than a scientist.
Nonetheless, he is considered by many as the Father of Modern Paranormalism, not only because of his interest in strange phenomena, but because of his "modern" attitude towards religion, nineteenth century spiritualism, and scientific dogma.
Fort's Collected Works are published by Dover Books and individual volumes are available in recent editions. Almost all of Fort's works are available online thanks to the efforts of Mr. X, Consulting Resologist.
Fort's work of compilation and commentary on anomalous phenomena reported in scientific journals and press has been carried on very creditably by William R. Corliss, whose self-published books and notes bring Fort's collections up-to-date with a Fortean combination of humour, seriousness and open-mindedness. Mr. Corliss' notes rival those of Fort in volume, while being significantly less cryptic and abbreviated.
Fort's work has inspired very many to consider themselves as 'Forteans.' The first of these was screenwriter Ben Hecht, who in a review of The Book of the Damned declared 'I am the first disciple of Charles Fort..henceforth, I am a Fortean.' The Fortean Society, founded in Fort's lifetime by his friends — half in earnest and half in jest, like the work of Fort himself —. Fort, however, rejected the society and refused presidency; he was lured to its inaugural meeting by false telegrams. As a strict non-authoritarian, Fort refused to establish himself as an authority, and further objected on the grounds that those who would be attracted by such a grouping would be Spiritualists, zealots, and those opposed to a science that rejected them; it would attract those who believed in their chosen phenomena: an attitude exactly contrary to Forteanism. It is ironic, then, that many such Fortean groups have been established. Most notable of these is the magazine, The Fortean Times, which is a worthy proponent of Fortean journalism, combining humour, skepticism, and serious research into subjects which scientists and other respectable authorities often disdain. There is also an International Fortean Organisation (INFO) and other fortean societies, notably in Edinburgh and the Isle of Wight.
As a writer Fort was highly stylistic, blending passion and poetry, and his books are littered with quotes full of humour and insight.
"Now there are so many scientists who believe in dowsing, that the suspicion comes to me that it may be only a myth after all."
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere"
"I cannot accept that the products of the mind are subject-matter for belief"
"I can conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is anything more than the proper thing to wear, for a while"
"But my liveliest interest is not so much in things, as in relations of things. I have spent much time thinking about the alleged pseudo-relations that are called coincidences. What if some of them should not be coincidence?"
"The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open."
All of Fort's works are available online. See "External links."
This is an Article on Charles Fort. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Charles Fort Overview
Fort and the unexplained
Followers and fans of Fort
See also
Quotes
Books by Fort
Books about Fort
External links